Archive for the 'Miscellaneous' Category

My good friend Kai from Stylespion had a spontaneous idea a few days ago. The German blogosphere needs a little bit of loving. There is plenty of amazing content out there, but not enough exposure and unity among the blogs. He has asked the German blog community to participate by presenting their favorite German blogs today.

And it’s becoming obvious that it’s a huge success: as of this writing, he has had 480+ 690+ reactions to that post in the form of comments and trackbacks, plus huge exposure on Twitter. So I might as well join in. Sorry to my English-only readers as some of these (not all) will be in German, but I know a good portion of you are in Germany anyway. I’ve added the language after each blog’s name to make your life a little easier.(more…)

Hey everyone, just a quick note that I am currently organizing a Tweetup for people in and around Düsseldorf. A tweetup is a casual Twitter meetup that will give you the chance to meet your followers and fellow Twitterers in your area. Curious not-yet-Twitterers are also very welcome to join us!

Hi everyone! I’m just going to throw a question at you and hope this can turn into a good discussion that everyone will benefit from. Of course, this isn’t entirely altruistic: I myself am looking for some suggestions that will help with designing a complex CMS.

How do you go about wireframing a design beforehand?

Which apps do you use? What methods do you apply? Pencil on paper? Prototyping in Fireworks/Illustrator? Old-school table-cell copy&pasting in Dreamweaver? Or do you prefer to do a quick sketch and then jump right into Photoshop? Do you create complex work flow charts and study use-cases? Share your best practices!

Christian Moore’s […] Lux free open framework enables true multitouch interaction in Mac OS X. In fact, he says it can work under any platform and even a web browser, enabling complex user interfaces and object manipulation comparable to Jeff Han’s magic walls or the Microsoft Surface anywhere. —Gizmodo

This is pretty amazing stuff. Ever since getting used to the multitouch feature of my MacBook Pro, it’s become an essential tool for me. It really is that intuitive. Now to find an affordable multitouch display that can work with this:

Hot off the presses: Ecocho is a new search engine that delivers Yahoo! and Google search results with a twist: for every 1000 searches, they plant two trees through government verified programs. So you’re getting the same service as before, and you’re helping the environment with zero effort. The project is funded by the advertising that comes along with Google’s and Yahoo’s custom search solutions. I think the idea is brilliant (and so simple I wish I had thought of it), and I’ve already made it my default Firefox search plugin.

Ecocho needs our help

Unfortunately, only a few days after the launch, Google decided to block Ecocho from access to their results.

Google chose today – Earth Day, of all days – to pull their feed from Ecocho. They claim that Ecocho has broken the adsense rules, but Ecocho has never directed users to click on ads (as Google suggests) and Ecocho has not only always respected the adsense rules but also believes strongly in them for Ecocho to succeed. We need genuine Ecocho users to make the project work!

They ask that people head over to their blog for the full scope, maybe leave a comment, and if you’re feeling really social, email Google from the email address on those pages (there are petition letters on the page also) to voice your concerns. Please tell your family and friends also if you think they would care about the Ecocho cause.

Hansson talks about founding a profitable online start-up without falling for the multi-million VC-funding hype that web2.0 companies like MySpace and Facebook have spurred. Recorded at Paul Graham’s Startup School 08. Definitely worth a watch!

Just a few more hours and I’ll be off to the BarCampRuhr in Essen, Germany, for the weekend. If any of you are going to be there and want to meet up, let me know! For the undecided and the damn-why-didn’t-you-tell-me-earlier folks, there are still quite a few free slots if you want to go, too. I’m a first-timer so I really have no idea what to expect, but I’m told it’s going to be really great and omg-so-awesome. Well then, off we go…

We take a lot of good things in life for granted: health, financial stability, safety… also, up near the top of the list, we take friendships for granted. When is the last time you thanked a friend just for being friend? Or perhaps it’s just uncomfortable to place yourself into those happy mushy situations (I subscribe myself to that category). And it’s a good thing, knowing you can rely on someone no matter what. Still, in the spirit of the upcoming season (and to participate in Kai’s campaign) I’d like to pay tribute to (a few of) the people that enrich my life one way or another. Life wouldn’t be half as great without you folks.

We get better design when we understand our medium. Yet even at this late cultural hour, many people don’t understand web design. Among them can be found some of our most distinguished business and cultural leaders, including a few who possess a profound grasp of design—except as it relates to the web.

Jeffrey Zeldman writes a very insightful A List Apart article on the role of web design in the grand scheme of life, and the challenges and tasks we face. Oh, and write down this quote, because it will be around for a while:

Web design is the creation of digital environments that facilitate and encourage human activity; reflect or adapt to individual voices and content; and change gracefully over time while always retaining their identity.

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